Scholarship competition reaffirms local musicians' direction

Published 3:30 pm, Wednesday, December 26, 2012

STAMFORD -- For Lisa Occhino, the news that she had won the John Lennon Scholarship songwriting award came at the perfect time.

The 20-year-old Stamford resident and student at Boston's Berklee College of Music was stuck in a sort of music school rut.

Between class, where she studies the music industry, serving as the editor-in-chief at the Berklee Groove, the college's newspaper, and working on her start-up company SongWriterLink, which she describes as a "Match.com, but for songwriters," Occhino was beginning to feel how a lot of Berklee students start to feel after awhile -- like there's not a lot of time for music at music school.

"This competition, when I found out (I had won), the news kind of came at a time when I wasn't sure if I should put so much focus into this if I wasn't getting as much out of this as I thought it would," she said. "Winning this competition validated that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing at Berklee."

Occhino, already a decorated musician, performing at The Bitter End in New York and releasing an EP entitled "Discovery" last year, originally went to Berklee with the intention of majoring in songwriting on a scholarship. She eventually changed to music business and management.

"I originally wanted to go to Berklee for songwriting ... (but) I decided to pursue music business," she said. "I have equal passion for music business and songwriting. I think because I was so focused on my start-up company, I had so much writers block for the last few months and I was having a hard time finishing songs."

"You Will Never Understand" is the song that was selected by the various music industry executives, which the BMI Foundation used as judges for the first prize. It was a song Occhino started a year ago, but did not finish.

When she was looking back on lyrics she had written, she wanted to complete it.

"It's hard to (focus on your music) with a million other things on deadline. It's hard to make finishing songs a priority," she said. "The deadline for that competition was also sort of the deadline for me to finish the actual full track. That was motivation for me."

The competition received roughly 1,000 entries from songwriters between 17, and 24 and Occhino was one of four finalists.

"I ended up getting $10,000 for tuition so that's nothing to complain about. It's all still sort of surreal," she said. "It definitely gave me confidence and it validated that I'm in the right place and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing."